Human interaction proofs (“HIPs”), also known as CAPTCHAS, are used to ensure that a human, and not an automated computer process such as an automated computer script or bot, can access particular pages of a website. The HIP is a challenge designed to be easily solved by humans, yet too difficult for all but the most sophisticated computers to solve. HIPs have become commonplace on Internet websites to protect, for example, free online services, online polls, free mail services, etc., from abuse or unfair access by computers.
Existing HIPs often display text intentionally degraded using noise, overlays, shearing, etc., and the challenge is for a human to read the text. With advances in automated software processing, however, computers are increasingly proficient in deciphering the degraded text and, thus, solve such HIPs.
Therefore, there exists a need for a challenge, which may be used to control access to information, and which is easily solved by humans but difficult for most computers to solve.